Things are looking up

We now have Sky TV. Whoopie! Now I can listen to the BBC world service and watch “BBC World” (which is the same old news repeated endlessly every half hour, and is usually about some politically correct region of the world (India & Pakistan, now) I have absolutely no interest in whatever - still, you can’t have everything, can you?).

We are also in the middle of having the house re-decorated, so we will be ready whenever the local Port hoods let us have what’s left of the contents of our container. This has now been fumigado (fumigated) at our expense (see earlier post), and now needs to be formigado or ‘anted’ – i.e. the hoods need to go over every inch of everything in it with a fine toothcomb.

Other news includes the unexpected inclement weather. I know some of you guys over in the UK are fully familiar with this phenomenon (ha ha), but in the dry season in Amazonas, it’s something of a rarity. So our recent days have been mercifully cool (sub 30), and evenings feel quite cool (like tonight, with condensation, even, on the car!). Long may it continue, although it has exposed a few areas in the house that are letting in water.

Speaking of water, it is apparent that our torrential rain here is only a minor part of the picture, as river levels still seem to be going down at a steady 2 - 3cm per day. We’re now down to 27.39m (sorry I misquoted before – the high water mark was 28.18m, not 8.18m as originally reported). This still bodes ill for the flutuante, although we’re now thinking of buying a small plot of land by the river this year, where we can moor the flutuante next year. We’ll see.

I have good days and bad days with my Portuguese. Sometimes I can communicate, other times it’s like:

ME “Uma cerveja, por favor.”
THEM “O que?”
ME “Uma cerveja, por favor.”
THEM “Desculpe. “Nao entendi,” “O que ele disse...?”
NAICE “Uma cerveja, por favor.”
THEM “Ah. OK.”

Translate it if you will.

I was in the Hotel Tropical again this evening. Lots of Americans there. No disrespect, but they really are irritatingly loud and cringeingly arrogant. And invariably pale and grossly overweight. (And far too tall for my liking…)
Some frog has just turned up and positioned itself strategically next to my beer. I’ll have to go and rescue it (my beer, that is). Ciao….

Patient care in Manaus

Well there we are – another interesting week. Naice’s dad, Pedro, took ill and had to have a hernia op. in Manaus. Having booked himself into a private hospital (the insides of the public hospitals resemble a down-market version of M.A.S.H., blood running down the corridors from the dead and dying who have been scraped off the streets without an insurance policy etc etc). So the private hospital was a must. Of course the logistics of the op. were a bit more complicated than usual, with Dad having to come over the river by boat (how else?) and get delivered to the door by car.

The hospital looked suspiciously clean and efficient (suspicious because there just isn’t much in Manaus that’s clean and efficient – or even clean or efficient). The agreed rate, I believe, was around R$3k for the op (about £850), plus R$800 per night of aftercare. So we got him there for 10:00am on the Thursday, and he was duly operated on at around 16:30 (2.5 hours late). He stayed there overnight, with Naice in attendance (you don’t leave your relatives alone in hospital here – they might accidentally be bagged up and disposed of while your back is turned), and spent most of the night in agony, with an occasional wandering nurse (dragged in by Naice) saying such helpful things as “oh that’s perfectly normal” etc. Anyway, come 7pm the following night (and due another night’s stay), the decision was made to run away. But where to…?

So at 20:30 on the Friday night, Pedro duly appeared, delivered by his son Robbie to our doorstep. He hobbled into our hastily prepared bedroom (no furniture, no facilities, remember?), and spent another painful night at chez nous.

To cut a long story short, after staying with us for four days, he finally was able to go back across the river yesterday, much to his relief I think. For our part, it was a pleasure to look after him and his wife Raimunda (who joined us on the Saturday), and we were sorry (but relieved at the same time) to see them go. He’s still in pain, but we hope he’ll be OK after this week. In the meantime, Raimunda took the time to show me how to make my own chilli sauce from some chillies she found in our garden (chilli plant in photo). Looking forward to trying that.

More Wildlife

There is a beetle here (I may have mentioned him before – big as a football – oh, alright, a tennis ball, anyway) who looks incredibly handsome (as beetles go), but is pretty, well, stupid. Every time I come across him he’s lying on his back with his legs going 19 to the dozen, without any hopes of righting himself. I’ve rescued him at least half a dozen times now, and he usually trundles back to his wee hole (big hole, actually) in the garden wall near the pool, without so much as a ‘thanks mate’. Except for tonight. Tonight I found him with his big face pressed against our door (I nearly stood on him - tripped over him would be more like it). So I left him there and went out. But I was unsettled. I started wondering whether he was in fact just taking the piss. Maybe it was all part of his plan. Maybe he’s a concrete beetle, eyeing up our door posts and quietly plotting how to undermine our foundations (he’s big enough to move them, I’m sure). Anyway I, um, beetled back home (sorry), determined to remove him to a place of safety (i.e. a long way from our foundations)…and the bugger has gone. Now I’m going to bed worried about where he’s gone to. But no doubt I’ll see him again tomorrow, lying in a heap, legs akimbo, pretending that’s exactly how he wanted to be all the time. Or at least I hope so…

Container

The container holding all our worldly possessions is still locked up in the port of Manaus after 5 weeks. We received word today that the officials there (who have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for FIVE WEEKS) were now demanding that we dedetizasar (this verb makes more sense if you think of DDT) the container, as ‘all containers from Asia have to be dedetizasado’. Hmm, well Naice got a bit upset about this and suggested the officials who were demanding this go and get an atlas, and said that to the best of her knowledge and belief Europe and Asia were two entirely different continents. She then followed this up, with hardly a pause for breath, by telling them that if there were any damage as a result of this entirely unnecessary process (a process which, of course, WE have to pay for), we would be suing them. I enjoyed this part of the conversation muchly, although we wonder quietly whether we may have unleashed the bribery and corruption beast. Time will tell, but I will always maintain that the conversation was worth its weight in gold. Just wish our container was, too...

Water Levels

The water level on the Amazon has dropped from just over 8m (above some predetermined mark they use down at the docks), to 7.60m, since 23rd June. Things are not looking good for the floating bar. Will keep you updated with latest levels as the news comes in (that’ll be exciting, eh…?).

Gardening

Our gardener, Claudeno, has spent two days putting a wire mesh fence around the top of the garden so we won’t lose any wandering dogs or children down the wilder slopes around the garden (photos). The slopes are planted with various trees including Coconut palm, Mango, Papaya and Banana, but are pretty wild nonetheless. Besides being an attraction for the local monkeys, the bananeiras in particular are excellent hosts for banana spiders and scorpions, and the long grass below for snakes of various types and sizes. I haven’t plucked up the courage myself to make any forays down “the slope” yet, but I suppose I'll have to sooner or later. Anyway, now that the grass is all cut, the place is beginning to look a bit more respectable.

We’re having a party for some friends’ children this weekend, and all now looks organised for this. The ph of the pool is still too low, according to my litmus paper, so I’ll have to buy some more elevador de ph before Saturday. We’ve also managed to tidy up the bathroom a bit, so that the door, the shower and the toilet all work Ok now. This is good. Someone else will have to do the food, though, as I don’t know one end of a barbecue from the other (and it has to be a barbecue, as this is a national requirement, quite possibly written into the Brazilian legislation). The current barbecue contraption is seen centre of last photo. It looks completely cream-crackered to me, but Naice insists it has years of useful life ahead of it!

Telephones and other projects

Progress on the phone front. Naice finally managed to get us two mobile phones on contract (it has only taken 6 weeks…), and at the same time it would appear the local phone company are suddenly interested in installing a telephone line…and in a rash moment we signed up for Sky TV and this may be done within the same timeframe (2 weeks, maybe?) Of course for the latter, we need to supply a 127v electricity socket, for which we need an electrician. This could be a major hurdle – we also need an electrician to install two 220v supplies for air-conditioners, make the existing 220 and 330v pump supplies safe, and provide a distribution box near the wall where we are currently, um, borrowing electricity from the grid. Of course as soon as we have all this sorted out, we will be informing the electricity company of what we have discovered so that we can be on the right side of the law in a while (rather than have them discover, and get fined).

We have someone coming to decorate the house, too, so that we can finally get some furniture and be ready to receive our container if we ever get the thing out of the docks, and if the contents survive the fumigation process (see The Container).

Meanwhile the boat project is nearly completed, and next week Shamrock leaves the boatyard and goes to the local Suzuki guy to have the important bits fitted. We are also considering a few other projects at the moment. One is the installation of an electric gate at the house, which would require us to knock down part of the walls and do some rebuilding. The other is the erection of a chapel de palha, which is essentially a wooden, palm-covered, open-sided structure where one can sit in the shade or swing in one’s hammock etc. We could use this for ourselves and guests, as an area to sip a few bevvies from (or tea, if you prefer), following a dip in the pool etc. And I hope it may be possible to thus utilise some of the slopey bit of the garden by building it out on stilts. I’m also thinking of getting a bike (well, a scooter thing), which one of us can use to potter around the locale while the other has the car. Other than this, we’re getting reasonably organised and settled.

Bote II

Following a further visit, more photos of the boat, which is in the middle of being painted. Hopeful that next week will see the project completed and Shamrock on the water...

Bote

As promised/threatened, some photos of the boat. I had written several paragraphs about it, but have now lost them (twice), and can't face typing it all up again - so you're spared the detail for the moment. More when the project is nearing completion.

Update

As you can see, internet access has become even more spasmodic. This is due mainly to us moving permanently into our new house, which is in an area which is relatively remote in Manaus terms – so we have no mains water or sewerage, no telephone (yet), and our electricity is a “gato” or ‘cat’, which is an interesting euphemism for ‘stolen from the nearest electricity pylon’. Anyway, I’ve borrowed this connection from our friends Zaira and Flavio, who have limited broadband access in the nearby (very posh) Ponta Negra area, so I’ve taken the opportunity to provide here the first pics of the house and attendant wildlife. Speaking of which, everything seems to come in biblical porportions here, which is to say all the animals come two by two – we have 2 Sauim de Coleiras, 2 Iguanas, and 2 toucans. We’ve only seen one sloth, but the other one was probably just too slow to capture on ordinary film… The moth in the pictures measured just over six inches from wingtip to wingtip, and there are lots of other equally monstrous insects, but it’s difficult to get close enough to them to do them justice on film. I’m still working on getting a shot of the beetle that keeps knocking at our wee small door (Walter de la Mare..?).

Since my last post, we have had great fun trying to get a few things organised, predictably with only limited success. And Brazilian beauracracy (help – I can’t spell in English anymore – oh the shame of it…) continues to try to keep pace with continental drift (the continents are pulling away easily). Notably, our goods remain locked up by the local sheriff(s), although we’re moving (well, pointing, at least) in the right direction. In the meantime we’ve managed to get some necessities for the house (vis. one mattress, one fridge, one microwave, two plastic chairs and a TV), and have finally got the pool clean (at least we had until some nocturnal visitor crapped in it last night – strange to say the least!). [Note - to he who offered to come out as pool attendant (you know who you are), I would just like to point out that I have now spent 4 days cleaning the thing out and not only does every bone in my body ache, but the skin that was underneath the skin on my back that was burnt, is now burnt. So where were you…?] I now know how to operate the water pump and the pool pump, and yesterday we invested heavily in a small lawnmower B&Q wouldn’t be seen dead giving away. This is for our gardener, who threatens to come today to cut the grass and tidy the garden up a bit. We also have an electrician lined up to come and sort out some of the last occupant’s ridiculous DIY connections, and after that we may even be able to get an air-conditioner.

Pool

Since we’ve been cleaning the pool, it has struck us as somewhat ironic that as we move around from one spot to the other, rotating round the garden to avoid the sun, presumably there’s more than one of you back there rotating yourselves round the garden to avoid the shade. C’est la vie and all that…

Ozzie

Ozzie isn’t very well at the moment. We still haven’t managed to get him clipped (but hopefully today we will), and he has now been introduced to fleas and carrapato, which I reckon are somewhat similar to sheep ticks. So he’s bitten and hot, and feeling a bit sorry for himself. Hopefully by the weekend we will have improved things a bit. And we daren’t let him run around the garden yet, for fear of him running off into the jungle and getting eaten by something (or eating something, I suppose). This week we hope to fence off the worst of the jungly bits and treat the grass for carrapato, so that should help. I took him into the pool the other day (I thought it might drown the fleas), but he really hated it. Interestingly, his instinct for the doggy paddle kicked in as soon as his back legs were in the water, so even though his front paws were out of the water they were still doing the paddle. Amusing, except for the fact that in the absence of any water, the end result was my chest getting a good clawing (yes I know – serves me right – but he did stop scratching after his bath, so maybe we did kill off a few of the fleas after all). So at the moment Ozzie is moping about the house looking like a disappointed pig, but I’m really hoping that the next time I write he will be fully back on form.

Boat news

The boat is coming on rightly, and I hope to get some photos for the next entry(ies). So far, the boat builder has put nearly all the relevant bits in place except for the cover or capota. The thing now looks more like the Queen Mary than a 6m fishing boat, but hopefully that’s just because it’s out of the water. The next step is to fit the steering kit and the seats, and then paint it (navy blue on the outside and grey inside, with a white capota). The boat will be named Shamrock (after the one we saw in Plymouth) and carry the appropriate symbol too. This neatly avoids the issue of calling it Ozzie and upsetting Naice, or vice versa. After this, and probably next week, the boat will be delivered into the hands of the local Suzuki agent to have the 4-stroke 50hp motor fitted, along with the various instruments and other bits (lights etc). And finally, we have to order the various ancillary bits from someone else (life jackets, a ladder, fire extinguisher etc etc), so that we can take it to be properly registered with port authorities.

Still no progress with the floating bar, I’m afraid. There just aren’t any floats around for the area we’re interested in. This is making it look increasingly like the project could be delayed a full 12 months. Frustrating, but not a disaster – it will happen in due course. All the paraphernalia is carefully stored for appropriate time – thanks to all contributors!

I find myself with a spare 15 minutes of internet use, so here's a quick update. Today we had our first rain since arriving. Very welcome it is too, as the temperature has plummeted to just below 30, which my burnt back is finding most comfortable.

Our car, which went into Renault yesterday for assessment of an oil leak, has failed to emerge and we probably won't get it back until tomorrow now. I guess that's what you get when the French laissez faire and Brazilian amanha attitudes combine.

We're still not in the house permanently, but hope to be tomorrow. Or maybe the next day...

Went to see the boat yesterday to check on progress, and asked them to move the main seat back 10cm. This was due to my re-checking my plans and realising that the 100 litre fuel tank I requested (and on which I will be sitting) is positioned just forward of the theoretical point of equilibrium. Does this make any difference? I asked myself. Well, drawing on all my years of boat building experience, I figured it probably might - so I thought moving it as far back as possible would be generally a Good Thing. Perhaps those of you out there with more knowledge of these things might advise? (Although it's too late now, anyway...) As far back as possible turned out to be 10cm, otherwise it would have compromised my other requirement, which was to leave a space of at least 170cm between this seat/tank and the rearmost seat, so I can get things like huge fish in the boat with ease, and so I can lie down if I want a snooze (and tie a hammock diagonally between the posts supporting the cover). Anyway, next visit is tomorrow, when I'll be able to see all the seats in place and give my authorisation for the next stage (whatever that is).

Ozzie hasn't been clipped since we got here (things still being held by the Gruppenfuhrer at Manaus docks), so he's beginning to look like a big ball of fluff. We are getting him clipped next Tuesday, so we can allow him out of the air-conditioning, poor chap. Must get clipped myself soon, too...

First day in the house

We spent our first full day at the house (except for sleeping there, as we have no bed as yet), and I have started cleaning the swimming pool. I thought this would be a pleasant and generally enjoyable thing to do, but was quite wrong. Apart from anything else, unless you have diving gear on, it´s almost impossible to get any force behind your scrubbing brush when you´re standing at the poolside and the brush is six foot under the water. And then there´s that dashed sun. I can´t get in the pool, ´cause it´s too dirty, and I can´t stand around it when it´s too sunny or Í´ll get burnt to a crisp (I know this, because I am that crisp). Then there are all the chemicals - chlorine for this, sodium for that, something else for the other thing. And the pump, and the filter, and the dead frogs in the water, and the insects, and the leaves. And finally, I thought I could solve the riddle by just draining the pool, giving it a good scrub and filling it back up. The problem is, it holds 60,000 litres of water, and our water tank holds 2,000. The water tank is fed from an artesian well in the garden, and it took an hour and a half to fill it up with the little green water pump we have. So....I empty the pool, we´re immediately into, what, 30 tank-fulls at 1.5 hours = 45 hours of pumping? And anyway, we have a small stream at the bottom of the garden, and the environmentalists among you will think it pretty not-on to pump 60,000 litres of dirty, chlorinated water into it. Jeez - I´m already thinking of filling it in and planting an herbaceous border instead. (Only joking).

On a more exciting note, we had 5 visitors to the garden during our first full day there. Firstly there was a big fat froggy-toady-thing in the pool (and still alive, as no significant chlorine in the pool at this point). So I helped him out and chucked him down the hill towards the stream. No doubt he will return.

Second visitor was a preguica, or sloth. We thought it was a monkey, until we saw him reach out veeerrrryyy sllllooooowwwwlllyy to pick something off a branch.

Shortly after this, we had a pair of collared monkeys come up to steal fruit off one of the trees. They´re Sauím-de-Coleira monkeys, quite small and on the endangered species list.

Third visitors were a pair of toucans, who were playing footsie in and around the garden for a while, making quite a racket (tsk tsk). I´ve seen one in the wild before, but it was much much bigger, so I think these were red-billed toucans.

And finally, we had a big green iguana lolling around in the top of one of the trees.




Quite a toing and froing really, and long may it continue! Other than spending time trying to identify our guests, it was just Naice doing some tidying up and me getting burnt while trying to figure out how to clean the pool. But it was really great to finally get our own space, although we´re still sleeping at Sao Jose as we haven´t much in the way of furniture yet.

I´m hoping to get some photos posted up soon, but until I can get wireless access, it isn´t going to happen. In the meantime, I can tell you that the house is quite small and unassuming, with two bedrooms, a through lounge-dining-kitchen affair and a couple of wee rooms which could be an office and a store room maybe. The main bedroom has its own bathroom and there is a separate, so-called ´social´bathroom for guests (although at present it´s not very social, I must say). This is all on one floor. There is a separate area below the house for the live-in (no, we won´t be having one), comprising a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/utility area. The grounds slope down towards the house, so that above the house is a swimming pool and covered barbeque area, and at the very top of the garden, near the entrance, is a small kennel block and the water tower. And that´s it, really, except for the view. To the rear and left of the property is a small valley surrounded by rainforest. We have no way of knowing when this will all be chopped down (tomorrow? next month next decade?), but you can be sure it will be. Until such times, we will enjoy it and look after it as best we can. Hopefully it´ll still be there when you come to visit, and who knows - maybe the pool will be clean by then too!

New house

This post is a bit out of sequence I'm afraid, but I'm going to have to go in a moment and have no guarantee of when next I'll get internet access, so here's the latest...

Cutting a long story short, we finally took the plunge and bought a house. It was over our original budget (nothing new there then), and not precisely what we were looking for (ditto), but we both loved it the minute we saw it. After some strategic toing and froing and some reasonably hard bargaining, we got the price down from R$290,000 to R$200,000 with an air-conditioner thrown in(!). I don't have any pics yet, but will endeavour to post some in the coming weeks or months. For those who like google earth, you can get a clear picture of the site (it shows the original house, bottom left, and oubuildings, right) at 3 deg 1 min 36.11 sec South/60 deg 4 min 30.04 sec West. It belonged to a vet, and the outbuildings are actually kennels. A new house was built on the site of the old one, and a swmming pool (yay!) added in 2003. We hope to move in tomorrow, so more on this later.

We've also placed an order for a small 6m powerboat (bote - as per awful pic), which should be ready by the end of the month. We've had no luck so far with the floating bar - there are currently no available boias or floats in the area we want to place the bar (3 deg 49 min 13.13 sec S/60 deg 22 min 17.95 sec W), meaning they would have to come over 100km by river from Manaus. Eek. Still looking, but if we don't find something this month, the water may be too low for us to get the boias across, meaning a delay of almost a full year. Keep you posted.

Manaus - the start of things

Sadly my poor addled brain is apt to forget lots of things (as many will attest), so I'll have to give you the gist of events, and when I can put together a more complete diary I'll add anything of interest at a later date.

After ensconcing ourselves in our billet in Sao Jose (b&w pic) and recovering for a while, we visited old friends Charlie (Italian) and Annick (Belgian) on Sunday and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Annick was able to tell us of someone who was selling a car which was almost new. We weren't desperately enthusiastic (in Brazil 'almost new' or semi-novo can mean anything up to 200,000km or 10 years), but said we would have a look. Having arranged to do this, we then proceeded to look at some new (and semi-novo) cars first. Ha ha ha. The price of a half-decent 2-wheel drive people carrier is around GBP30000 - GBP40000. Anyway, we then went to look at the recommended semi-novo, which turned out to be a Renault Scenic with 16000km on the clock. Apart from a few dents and scrapes and a leaking oil sump (cars have it tough here), and apart from being French and a Scenic, it looked pretty good...so we bought it for R$35000 (around GBP8000). First problem resolved.

Meanwhile, back at the house, we were suffering from a distinct lack of air conditioning, and had discovered quickly that walking the dog, apart from being a ludicrous thing for anyone to do in Sao Jose, was fraught with problems. Firstly, the roads are like mini obstacle courses, with drivers of all sorts of vehicles competing at high speed for any available patch of unholed tarmac. There are no road signs, no traffic lights, no zebra crossings (ha ha ha), no road markings. Where there is any pavement, it is usually covered by weed, rubbish, turds, stray dogs and dead people (OK, I exagerate slightly on this last point). To get to one, you have to first traverse the stream of water cascading down from all sorts of dubious outlets protruding from the popular houses lining the road. These usually culminate in open sewers located at strategic points so that you can either drive into them, ride into them or walk into them. The stray dogs, of course, are not used to Irish royalty (I refer to Ozzie, in case you doubt) striding purposefully among them and piddling on their favourite posts or mounds of rubbish. So of course they round on the offender to chase him off. So we quickly discovered that walking the dog needed two people - one to keep Ozzie in check until he's done what he needs to do; and one at the rear with a big stick to fend off the repeated attacks of the locals. All this in 34 degrees of heat is somewhat tiring, and normally results in us (all) collapsing on the bed after the walk. More of a battle than a walk, in fact. So far, we are winning the battles, but the war is clearly theirs...

Phew!

Phew indeed. It has been an interesting (Chinese sense) time since our last post some 3 weeks ago now. Since for the forseeable future my posts may be pictureless (but I'll do my best), I'll keep them short in order not to bore you too much.

You may or may not know, but chaos reigns in the skies of Brazil at present, with hordes (squadrons?) of flights cancelled or delayed, so we were relatively lucky that our flight to Manaus was delayed only 2 hours. Interestingly, since the break-up of the national airline Varig, the most common carrier now is called GOL (Goal, in English). It is difficult to know who they're modelling themselves on (see pic., if I can upload it) - orange livery, pay-per-bag, no seat booking, no food, sour faces, no refunds etc etc. Hmmm.

The good news is they've put their latest modified 737 on the SP - MAO route, cutting the time down to 3.5 hours. Hooray! So we arrived late afternoon, and when we emerged from the airport it was raining - I thought for a moment they'd flown us back to Belfast. But that rain was the last we've seen since then, more's the pity - no more now until October.

We were picked up at the airport by Naice's brother Robbie, and driven the 40km or so back to his house in Sao Jose, which is an area rather hopefully described as being "popular". Makes more sense when you understand that 'popular' in Portuguese can also mean 'poor''. Anyway, that's where we remain to date, although we hope to be moving tomorrow morning. more on this in a mo.